SMI Seminar Series

Event Details

Date:

Monday, 19 January 2015 - Monday, 19 January 2015

Time:

11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Room:

Level 4 Seminar Room

UQ Location:

Sir James Foots Building (St Lucia)

Event category(s):

Full Description:: The Sustainable Minerals Institute in partnership with the Institute for Social Science Research are hosting a seminar on Monday 19th of January. Michael Woolcock, Lead Social Development Specialist in the World Bank’s Development Research Group, and a (part-time) Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University, is speaking about ‘Building State Capability for Implementation: The role (and limits) of Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)’. Building the capability of states to implement increasingly complex and contentious tasks will be a central development issue in the coming decades. Much of the initial work of providing basic infrastructure and inputs has been attained, the challenge now is to improve the quality of services and to acquire the capability to implement, at scale, the more difficult tasks for which modern states are responsible. Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), which builds on a distinguished history of previous efforts by applied scholars and reflective practitioners, is one pragmatic strategy for responding to these challenges. Michael Woolcock is a founder of the World Bank’s Justice for the Poor program, the University of Manchester’s Brooks World Poverty Institute and the Harvard Kennedy School’s Building State Capability initiative. Michael has an MA and PhD in sociology from Brown University, and received his undergraduate education at the University of Queensland.